A Simple Tale
by Lady Drachir
Summary: A quickaction murder tale to whet your appetite.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1:  
Pursuit

Sam dashed around the corner and down into a dark, damp alley, her long red hair whipping behind her. Breathing heavily, she crouched behind two large green trashcans. A snarl, from the snout of a Great Dane echoed down the alley. Two pairs of hurried footsteps emanated in the darkness, resounding off the closely built buildings, sounding like a thousand rampaging stallions. Sam silently tucked her scraggly, wind-swept hair behind her ears and away from her eyes. The girl crouched low in a balled position with her legs tucked into her body and her arms clinging tightly to her legs, squeezing as though she could make herself smaller by doing so. The large dog sniffed its nose to the ground.

"Where did that little snitch go?" a man's voice resounded in the thickening darkness.

"I don't know...but I'll find out," a deeper, raspy voice replied quietly.

A soft metallic click echoed down the alley as the steps came closer and closer to Sam's hiding spot. A tumultuous detonation exploded near Sam's solace. A shrieked cry emitted from Sam's throat as she jumped to her full height at her startlement. Looking around as a deer in headlights, Sam saw the two men to whom the voices belonged towards her left, which was the opening of the alley, leading to a street-lit avenue. To her right, the Great Dane eyed the girl, no older than fifteen, warily. In front of her was a dark, red, brick wall covered with slime and mildew residue and behind her...

She put her hands behind her and slowly backed her tender, slender body up until she felt hard brick behind her.

"Come here, little girl. We won't hurt you. We just want to give you back your purse that you dropped," the man with the shriller voice said.

Sam didn't take time to look him over, but with wide, scared eyes, looked quickly at her purse dangling from the man's fingertips. It contained a measly ten dollars that her mother had finally consented to give her to go out to dinner with her friends. The men had begun to chase her while she walked to the diner in the soft, velvety darkness.

Then the other man drew Sam's attention, waving his arm about. Her eyes, which couldn't have gotten much wider, opened in such fright that they hurt the girl. The other man had a gun! She continued to feel against the wall, whispering silent prayers from her trembling lips. The snarling hound came closer and the men came nearer to her from the opposite direction.

There! A wooden door. She found the handle quickly. The two men were muttering in false sweetness; Sam was too frightened to think of anything but escape.

She twisted the handle with deft but light handling. The handle didn't turn! She twisted the handle again, this time with more force. Again the handle would not turn. In panic, she wrestled with the handle; jerking, twisting with all of the pathetic might she could muster.

"Please, please!" she cried, slamming her lithe body against the door. "Dear God please!" she screamed, tears streaming down her face and the door opened. She slammed the door behind her, throwing all the locks she saw.

"Ah, man!" one of the men said. Sam, heart beating so hard against her ribs that it may have broken through, took one last look at the door, heard the man's body slam against it, and took off like a shot. She climbed up the stairs of an old apartment building.

'Just maybe,' she thought, 'there might be a fire escape in one of these rooms.' Behind her, a metallic blast resounded throughout the old, dirty building.

"Honey, I'm home!" a deep voice called with an evil crackle. Sam opened one of the doors, not thinking of quietness and running with all of her might. She searched frantically for a place to hide, but the apartment had only one room. She looked to the windows to see if there may be any way of escape. The men's boots thundered up the stairs, and ran into the room where the girl's tears began to hit the floor.

"Well," said the man with the shrill voice. "There's no better place to carry out the deed." A single gunshot could be heard in that lonely, old building that night. A silver shell fell with a sullen thud to the wooden floor.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:  
Mystery

A police squadron surrounded a small white house with a pink picket fence. Young Samantha Adams had not been in school, had not come home after that fateful night, and had not arrived at the diner. The parents had worried for a while after a mysterious call from one of Samantha's friends at the diner wondering if she had decided not to come or if she needed a ride. Thinking their almost fifteen-year-old daughter had just gone window shopping on the way, or gotten lost, they worried, but did not think their daughter to be one of those stories they had heard about on the news. Victims just disappeared. Sometimes they were found, in backyards, or rivers, or other countries, and sometimes they weren't. One had been found totally fine besides some loss of memory but no location to the captors could be found. Even memory probes seemed to have failed.

The city of Zangy was supposedly an all together crime free place. Hover scooters zoomed sometimes quite quickly and caused a few lift car accidents but nothing ever as serious as this chain of events. The Adams had called the local police when Sam hadn't come home and the clock ticked to eleven o'clock. The police woman that had answered the phone in a drowsy nasal voice asked the situation and switched Mr. Adams over to another segment of the police station. While Mrs. Adams paced, nibbling frantically on her necklace, wringing her hands together, and asking her husband what the police man was saying every few moments, the policesergeant listened politely then told Mr. Adams that not enough time had passed since their daughter had left and to call back if the girl did not show up in forty-eight hours from the time of the phone call.

The forty-eight hours had passed by slowly in the Adams house. Neither got a wink of sleep and both sat as close to the phone as possible, waiting for their baby girl and only child to call saying that she just got caught in some traffic or bad weather or had gotten lost and was at an old lady's house down the road. Mrs. Adams called her very best friend and had asked her to call every one she knew to see if anyone had seen Sam. But no one had; at least, no one that the Adams knew of.

So the police had come, and asked countless questions, taking down every response in their little lined notebooks. Finally, after it began to get light, as the sun began to rise, the police men said goodnight and got into their quaint blue and white police hover cars and rode home to their wives and children. They had sent out a search party along the roads. Not a trace of young Samantha Adams could be found. Not even their hound dogs could find a trace of her along any of the paths Mr. and Mrs. Adams thought she could or would have taken.

"She wouldn't go back into the alleys," they had said with great confidence. "She's got a head on her shoulders and she listens to what she is told." Sam's parents had always been very insistent that she stay out of the alleyways from her childhood. She normally did stay away from the alleys, but she wanted to see and since she had the time before she would get to the diner, she had decided to take the long way around.

Then the dog came and growled so ferociously that Sam ran. And then the men had begun to follow her too. The Adams decided that if anyone were to call having information, they would most likely call the police now so they no longer needed to sit by the phone in anticipation. Mr. Adams turned on the stove and began to crack eggs into a bowl, mixing them with milk. Mrs. Adams put toast in the toaster, six slices.

"Dear," Mr. Adams said softly, gently. "We only need four slices."

Mrs. Adams snuffled a bit and quietly responded, "Oh, I was thinking Sam would be joining us." Mrs. Adams sat down into her seat at the table while her husband made lunch. "I'm so afraid for Samantha," Mrs. Adams almost cried to her husband.

Mr. Adams came over, taking his wife in his arms, "I'm sure she'll be alright," he said with gentle assuredness. The two stood in each others arms while the toast burnt and the eggs fried to a crisp brown.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:  
Discovery

Police men had been searching the city for two days and had called the stations in other close cities. Hound dogs and robotic dogs had searched many of the streets. Young Anthony Dansegh, a new police man to the force, had his trustworthy and faithful hound dog Tracy with him. He had a hunch and had taken almost every thinkable route from the Adams' house to the diner yet nothing had turned up. But a few still remained. The one place the Adams said their daughter would not have gone was the most likely place for the event to have occurred.

So, Anthony had taken Tracy with him to search in the murky shadows of the alleyways. So far, after a full day of searching, nothing had turned up and young Anthony's spirits were not as high as they were two days ago. His shoulders were slumped in the gloomy darkness and even Tracy sniffed with minimum effort.

"Come on," Anthony said glumly is a sleepy tone, "It's getting late, we should head back home." Anthony turned his back to start to walk back towards his house when suddenly, every hair on the back of his neck stood on end in fright and ecstasy. Tracy had lifted her pointed nose into the air and let out a moanful howl.

"Yes!" Anthony screamed as his hound took off at a fast speed, nose to the ground in pursuit. The young police man ran after his dog and around a corner. Grime and filth lined the streets of the alleys. The dog sniffed around two large green trashcans, Anthony bent down, sneaker imprints were in the slime and mud behind the cans. The prints backed towards the wall and into a door where two other prints appeared. The door was open. Where the handle appeared to have been, a large hole was blasted and the wood was jagged and shattered.

Anthony's heart raced as he walked into the old abandoned building. Lucy sniffed with strong whiffs of air exhaling out of her nostrils. There were no more footprints to follow, but the hound had a new scent to trace. Anthony followed his faithful companion up a flight of stairs and down a long hall. A small blue wooden door sat closed and locked, but Lucy whined and scratched at the door's base. Anthony threw his weight against the door; no budge from the hinges which seemed too old to even creak. He tried again, and again.

Finally, on his fourth try, the door opened with a loud bang and the young police officer stepped back in astonishment. On the floor before him lay a large puddle. The hound sniffed the liquid and slowly backed away and sniffed around the rest of the room. Anthony slowly approached the puddle, a queasiness filling his gut. He bent down on his knees, slowly extended his left hand and touched the liquid with two of his fingers. The liquid was cold and sticky but slid down his fingers and onto his hand. Blood red, the liquid was most certainly none other than what the young officer assumed. He clicked on his communicator and talked to the head police chief.

"Sir, I think I've found something. You better get here quick."

"Alright," a mechanical voice replied, "We'll track your signal and catch you in ten minutes tops. Over and out." Anthony clicked off his communicator and sat flat on the floor.

Lucy still sniffed around the room. Whistling, Anthony called to the dog, "Hey, Lucy, the squad will be here in a minute. Take a sniffer break." The police officers arrived in a few minutes, took blood samples from the puddle on the floor and confirmed it to be Samantha's. They informed the Adams who took it all together well because that meant that there was a chance their daughter was still alive. If she were dead, the criminal would have left the body, but since there was no body, the girl may have crawled away to safety and be trying to get home at that very moment. Mrs. Adams baked a full supper for the police officers who had brought her the news. Having a little bit of knowledge made her feel better as she managed to snatch a small nap during the night.


End file.
